This Is How A Startup-Collaborated Music Performance Looks Like

The level of expectation when you’re heading to a tech conference is nowhere like the anticipation of right before a music concert. To narrow down that gap, an experimental combination of startup pitching and art performance was featured on stage on StartupCon 2016, held in Seoul, Korea on Tuesday and Wednesday.

With its catch phrase ‘Startup Meets Art’, the concert lined up various collaborative programs, including a magician showcasing a wearable device while performing his magic show, a musical actor humming to showcase a music solution startup, and a movie director showcasing a movie review startup through his online drama series.

Here we document how a VR audio solution startup and an instrument education startup collaborated with musicians on stage to pitch their solution:

The best way to experience virtual reality is with an immersive sound effect. However, one of the technical barriers to enabling lifelike sounds in VR is that stereo sound is not all directional, while VR images are available for all 360-degrees. How can you make your bomb sound seem like it’s coming from 2’o clock, and generate an effect of a monster sneaking up behind of their back. GAUDIO LAB’s 360-degree audio solutions helps VR game and content creators to make their sound much more immersive and interactive.

Collaborating with Korean music band Jambinai, a South Korean post-rock band, GAUDIO’s CEO Hyun-oh Oh demoed their VR technology on stage. The user, wearing a headset stood in the middle encircled by four members in the band. One of the band members started to play instruments, and user turned around, he could sense the melody was coming from 12’o clockwise, from his left, from his back, then his right.

GAUDIO demos its sound VR technology with Jambinai musicians

GAUDIO uses Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF), which allows users to hear sounds from different directions while wearing VR headsets. Its binaural technology was adopted as a part of MPEG-H 3D Audio, the next generation international audio standard.

The company won the first prize in VR/AR Challenge 2016, hosted by Samsung Electronics and Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning in this May. Founded in May 2015, the VR company raised $1 million USD by SoftBank Ventures Korea and Capstone Partners in July. Last month, the company raised $5 million USD funding from KIP, LB Investment, along with its previous investors, SoftBank Ventures Korea and Capstone Partners.

Children easily give up learning how to play instruments. Aiming to empower people with the drive to learn instruments, Jameasy makes an app that allows users to easily learn how to play instruments through gamification.

Second Moon, a Korean ethnic fusion band, tried out Jameasy’s solution on stage. Using the app, the violinist of Second Moon stuck Jameasy’s sensor module to her violin. The app showed her the notes while she played and analyzed the tune and rhythm. Using the app, a user can tune the violin, play games, and jam with an ensemble with other instruments, mimicked by the app. The app adjusts the tempo to keep in beat with the user.

2nd Moon’s Violinist Demos Jameasy’s instrument learning app

The company looks to adapt the technology to other string instruments, including the ukulele, guitar, cello and viola. The beta version of the solution will be launched in this month, Daeyoung Jeon, CEO of Jameasy said.